Nail Polish Coated Baits...do They Need To Be Sealed?

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Just wondering if I need to seal my basswood cranks before coating with nail polish. I assume the urethane clear I use will be plenty of waterproofing, but will the nail polish be ok on the wood without special treatment? I dug through the archives looking for "sealer" and found a couple of mentions about using clear nail topcoat to seal....not sure if the source was reliable though.

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The seal coat is there to protect the wood in case the top coat fails. The top coat is there to mostly protect the paint. If the top coat fails on a wooden lure and you don't have a seal coat to protect the wood then it's not only the paint job that's in trouble. It's one thing to repair a paint job and apply a new top coat. Trying to repair a water soaked and swollen wood body may not even be possible depending on how much water the wood has soaked up. Do you want to risk the loss of a lure because you didn't want to take the time to seal it or do you want to put out the extra effort for the added security of the seal coat? The choice is yours.

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Undercoating/sealing does several things: stops the grain from popping if you paint the lure with water based paint, acts as a last barrier to water intrusion if the rest of the finish is damaged, provides a smooth hard surface for a more attractive paint job regardless of what kind of paint you use. If you're asking whether you can use nail polish as an undercoating, the answer is yes. Seems like a pretty expensive option, but to each his own.

You didn't provide any other detail about how you plan to finish your bait, so a lot is open to conjecture. If you want to paint lures with nail polish, yes, the nail polish can do dual duty as both an undercoating and a color coat. Since it is both shiny and waterproof, you could in fact just paint raw wood with it and fish it - no topcoat required. Would most crankbait painters opt for this method? Nope. It just won't be as durable as a multi-coat finish, nor will it be as smooth, nor will you be able to blend color or do detail like you can with an airbrush, for a more attractive and lifelike bait. But is it feasible? Yeah.

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Undercoating/sealing does several things: stops the grain from popping if you paint the lure with water based paint, acts as a last barrier to water intrusion if the rest of the finish is damaged, provides a smooth hard surface for a more attractive paint job regardless of what kind of paint you use. If you're asking whether you can use nail polish as an undercoating, the answer is yes. Seems like a pretty expensive option, but to each his own.

You didn't provide any other detail about how you plan to finish your bait, so a lot is open to conjecture. If you want to paint lures with nail polish, yes, the nail polish can do dual duty as both an undercoating and a color coat. Since it is both shiny and waterproof, you could in fact just paint raw wood with it and fish it - no topcoat required. Would most crankbait painters opt for this method? Nope. It just won't be as durable as a multi-coat finish, nor will it be as smooth, nor will you be able to blend color or do detail like you can with an airbrush, for a more attractive and lifelike bait. But is it feasible? Yeah.

That is pretty much what I wanted to know - whether it would waterproof the wood. Before posting this I was wondering if it would penetrate deep enough into the wood, because if anything bad enough to get through my clear coat with almost definitely go through to the wood. Also was concerned whether it would raise the grain or cause other effects. And if a color coat would do the sealing job on its own, or if pure clear nail topcoat was required- without the pigments, extra additives, or metal flake.

Most of my hard baits are glitter coated. A thin, single layer of glitter works best- thus a flashy, matching base coat is needed to hide the gaps between glitter flakes, and to cover the nose and tail ends, which get no glitter. I:

1) Start with a base color coat, usually black

2) Add the color coat, usually gold metallic or whatever matches the glitter

3) Apply a coat of glue

4) Sprinkle the glitter on

5) Add (ctex) black back (over scale netting) and white belly

6) Clear with about 4 coats of Lurecraft Poly-Sil ( a 4:1 catalyzed urethane, I believe.)